Mobile and internet penetration are two key factors contributing to social media being something of a ‘late bloomer’ on the African continent. There are pockets in Africa where social media is booming and blooming, such as Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt, South Africa and Morocco. On the other hand are countries such as Ethiopia with a 4.4% internet penetration despite its 100 million population. Due to such inconsistencies, Africa’s social media burst out of its bubble is slower than what is desired.
A snapshot of 2016: the internet penetration across Africa was 28.7% compared to the rest of the world at 55%. The knock-on effects show in the uptake of social media. As an example, Africans were responsible for only 9.3% Facebook users in 2016 despite being the continent with the second largest population in the world. Despite this however, Africa continue to show a proportionally greater rate of internet penetration. A big surge in the uptake of social media is likely to occur within the next five years given the rapid growth of internet on the continent.
The lack of infrastructure has caused African citizens to think of different ways of staying connected with social media. Majority (80%) of Africans accessed Facebook via their mobile phones. This should come as no surprise as mobile penetration across the African continent reached up to 70% in 2016. Consequently, companies such as Nokia have mass produced phones fit for the African market, which is cheap but has the usual functionality of everyday smartphones – allowing for increased social media use. Social media experts and companies are thus starting to think of ways of delivering social media products in a cheaper and faster way.
Despite the increased presence of smartphones, internet penetration remains an issue. The projected fibre cables being laid across the African coast is being touted as a long-term solution to this. It will allow easier use for more data-heavy social media platforms such as Pinterest, Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube. This infrastructure has already arrived to countries such as Nigeria with an internet penetration of over 97%, and South Africa at over 52% which also explains why they top the charts for the African countries that frequent social media the most. It’s given rise to new trends in these countries which includes Facebook Live, a Snapchat obsession, and increased use of YouTube on mobile.
The economic and social influence of social media on Africa has also grown quite significantly over the past five years leading many experts to question the increased adoption rate. Take Jumia, a leading e-commerce business in Africa, as an example of how social media has benefited their businesses. They were able to garner 20% of their traffic to their website by using social media networks to increase their presence. Another example which demonstrates its economic importance is that on average, a social media practitioner in South Africa can be paid up to $70 000 a year. These types of insights explain why social media is expected to contribute up to $300 billion to the GDP on the African continent by 2020.
It’s not a clear-cut approach that increased social media presence and the subsequent economic prosperity on the African continent. The patterns can be seen on the social side of things, such as the power of the hashtag that has really caused traction in social media in the region. Most notably this started off with the Arab Spring back in 2010-2011. A similar type of social media revolution occurred in South Africa in 2016 with hashtags which included #RacismMustFall and #FeesMustFall. These type of social media movements saw a significant spike in social media activity in South Africa and also resulted in governmental policy changes.
When visiting cities such as Burundi, you might see very limited social media presence. Fly over to Rwanda and you might see the same. A flight over to South Africa or Kenya and you’ll be in a country where every exercise selfie is posted on Instagram and hiking pictures are placed on Snapchat. The growth in social media in African countries is striking. The great advantages that Africa has is its critical mass and a fast move towards putting in highly functioning infrastructure. Not dissimilar to Asia, responsible for 37% of all Facebook activity, the sheer amount of people on the continent and the technology which enables them to participate in social media is a direct link to social progress.